Muslim Friendly Tourism:
Developing and Marketing MFT Products and Services
In the OIC Member Countries
110
 TYD (Turkish Tourism Investors Association): Has invested in a more than
285,127 bed capacity in the tourism industry representing 25 of total tourism bed
investments in Turkey. They are the largest investor group for the sector. TYD has a
strong representation of power for incentives defined by government. 293
4. MFT Products and Services
 Muslim-Friendly Hotels
Bera Alanya Hotel, one of the leading Islamic hotels in Turkey, learned to accommodate the
Muslim customer from their own customer experiences. When they entered the MFT market
in 2007, they were inexperienced, and developed most of their MFT products and services
based on feedback from Muslim customers. From the start, the hotel’s management
consistently conducted customer surveys. They then developed new products and services
from scratch or updated them based on the result of these surveys.
Positioning itself as a family hotel, Bera Hotel accommodates different segments of Muslim
families, ranging from guests that are minimally modest (respecting general Muslim modest
attire but not wearing hijab) to others that fully wear the hijab.294
In recent years, one of the new trends in Turkey’s hotels is building swimming pools filled
with heated and filtered seawater. After traditional hotels with this service, one of the biggest
competitors of Bera Alanya Hotel is the Caprice Thermal Hotel, which serves as both a beach
resort and a thermal hotel in Didim, Muğla, Turkey, started to serve a new pool service called
Thalasso Pool. Due to rising competition and complaints from guests about the pool
temprature inside the hotel, which was 24 C degree, Bera Alanya Hotel Management invested
$170,000 for a new Thalasso Pool. In this type of pool seawater is flows from the sea to the
pool inside the hotel. It is filtered from impurities then warmed from 24 Celcius to 32-35
Celcius. Thalasso pools are a new attraction among tourists as heated and pressurized
seawater is good for health. As a special facility for Muslim families, Thalasso pools as they
built inside the hotel, with separate pools for men and women, As a result of this new service,
Bera Alanya succeeded in securing tourists in the 2016 season. 295
IC Hotels, one of the biggest mainstream hotel chains in Turkey, is targeting to attract Muslim
tourists as well as traditional customers. The IC Hotel Manager said that they are fully open to
Muslim-friendly tourist requests if their services allow them. They are not charging any extra
fees for MFT products and services they provide. The hotel has different types of rooms and
facilities to match both MFT and non MFT requests. The hotel management is now planning to
educate all staff to meet MFT customers’ needs. 296
Turkey has 4.248 tourism accommodation facilities in total (including hotels, holiday villages,
motels, thermals etc.) and only 200 of them call themselves “Islamic Hotels”, “Alternative
Hotels”, “Halal Hotels”, “Non-Alcohol Hotels” or “Family Friendly Hotels”.
29 ourism Investments of TTYD Members. Turkish Tourism Investors Association, 2016. Web.
294 From the face to face interview with Dilek Çağla Üner, Sales and Marketing Chief, Bera Alanya Hotel, Antalya, Turkey,
May 2016.
295 From the interview with Dilek Çağla Üner, Sales and Marketing Chief of Bera Alanya Hotel, Antalya, Turkey, May 2016.
296 From the email interview with Mr. Necip Fuat Ersoy, Business Development and SalesandMarketing Director of IC
Hotels, April 2016.